Posted by John Ullmen

When Debbie Quintana started an association to try to help her industry in the down economy, she encountered an unexpected negative attack on her reputation. Debbie is the CEO of Gourmet Gifts, a gift basket company that creates and delivers unique, affordable gift baskets. She is a featured nominee for the 2009 Solomon Awards for Leadership in Creative Conflict. I spoke with her after she and Operations Manager Dawn Riley reflected about how Debbie’s creative response turned the attack into an advantage, and set a great example for others.

Debbie QuintanaDebbie says that like many business owners in tough times when sales are down and one’s attitude can get affected, she tried to stave off fear by looking for ways to improve her business. Having helped other gift basket companies recently, she thought: What if we had a platform where we could share ideas, meet new people, talk about challenges and truly partner to build a community of gift basket professionals? Debbie created The Gift Basket Association, a new community of gift basket professionals, to pull together, support each other, and to make progress on their collective common interest of strengthening the gift basket industry. Theirs is a one billion dollar industry, and they set the goal to double the industry in the next five years.

This is where the conflict came in. Debbie was shocked to hear that one of the people to whom she sent a message as part of building this community was speaking poorly of her to peers in the industry. She heard he was making accusations that sounded so untrue that it brought her to tears. How could someone who never talked to her judge her and make such detrimental false statements? It didn’t stop there. In the ensuing weeks, more damaging comments were made in blogs and discussion forums, with the unfounded accusations getting passed along and amplified.

Debbie considered her options. Get mad? Ignore it? Respond with her own accusations? None of these options were attractive to her. Instead, she sought a way to use these events to her advantage. So she changed her thinking. She knew there must be a way to learn from this experience and improve as a businessperson. She stopped trying to figure out why someone would be so negative and disrespectful. Instead she focused on how to turn this conflict around, by getting her perspective in play, looking for ways to add value for her company, and advance a healthier exchange of ideas about promoting and improving the industry.

Debbie says she drew three key lessons from the incident:

Lesson #1: Empower yourself after a negative attack

Reading the false accusations motivated Debbie to make the truth overwhelmingly stronger. If her accuser said she lacked credibility, she made herself more available to demonstrate her credibility. She published references and testimonials, and made sure that her audience knew even more about her positive efforts for the industry. Debbie created podcasts so people could hear her voice and passion directly, and come to their own conclusions. She proactively shared ideas and plans for the industry association, so others could weigh in too. She publicly posted answers to the toughest questions that came her way. In short, she dealt with any negativity that came in by redoubling her efforts to publicly express the truth about what she stands for, and her positive vision for the industry.

Lesson #2: Adversaries can become allies

The person attacking Debbie had put a message on the front page of his website saying he didn’t endorse the association Debbie was helping to create. People became curious about the statement, and whenever someone contacted her about it, Debbie reframed the encounter as another opportunity to change negative biases.

There were several cases in which people contacted her saying harsh things based on rumors and third party information, but because Debbie maintained her calm and stuck to what she knew was true, they invariably ended on good terms. It even helped to expand the association, because several people who contacted her heard the benefits of joining, and did.

Lesson #3: Pass along the positive

Debbie also says it is important to pass along what she learned. When we see others experiencing negative attacks and bullying behavior, she encourages us to help them turn it into a learning experience for how to be stronger and look for ways to create value. Because of Debbie’s great response to these harsh negative attacks, the Gift Basket Association is more robust than it would have been. She hopes her story helps others too.

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